title: Metagenomic profiling of antibiotic resistance genes and mobile genetic elements in a tannery wastewater treatment plant.
abstract: Antibiotics are often used to prevent sickness and improve production in animal agriculture, and the residues in animal bodies may enter tannery wastewater during leather production. This study aimed to use Illumina high-throughput sequencing to investigate the occurrence, diversity and abundance of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) and mobile genetic elements (MGEs) in aerobic and anaerobic sludge of a full-scale tannery wastewater treatment plant (WWTP). Metagenomic analysis showed that Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Bacteroidetes and Actinobacteria dominated in the WWTP, but the relative abundance of archaea in anaerobic sludge was higher than in aerobic sludge. Sequencing reads from aerobic and anaerobic sludge revealed differences in the abundance of functional genes between both microbial communities. Genes coding for antibiotic resistance were identified in both communities. BLAST analysis against Antibiotic Resistance Genes Database (ARDB) further revealed that aerobic and anaerobic sludge contained various ARGs with high abundance, among which sulfonamide resistance gene sul1 had the highest abundance, occupying over 20% of the total ARGs reads. Tetracycline resistance genes (tet) were highly rich in the anaerobic sludge, among which tet33 had the highest abundance, but was absent in aerobic sludge. Over 70 types of insertion sequences were detected in each sludge sample, and class 1 integrase genes were prevalent in the WWTP. The results highlighted prevalence of ARGs and MGEs in tannery WWTPs, which may deserve more public health concerns.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, School of the Environment, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China.
authors.forename: Zhu
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Xu-Xiang
authors.initials: XX
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Kailong
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Yu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Miao
authors.forename: Peng
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.forename: Bo
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Chao
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Long
authors.forename: Aimin
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Li
mesh_terms: D044822:Biodiversity; D004251:DNA Transposable Elements; D004352:Drug Resistance, Microbial / Q000235:genetics*; D020459:Genes, rRNA; D059014:High-Throughput Nucleotide Sequencing; D056186:Metagenomics; D012722:Sewage / Q000382:microbiology*
chemical_list: D004251:DNA Transposable Elements; D012722:Sewage